By Steve CrumThe Little Stranger is a little gothic horror movie. Despite its mediocre budgeted trappings and lack of flashy digital effects, this slow paced haunted house film has a fair share of scares. Lucinda Coxon has adapted Sarah Waters’ best selling book of the same name, with Lenny Abrahamson (Room) directing.
Set in a British countryside during the humid summer of 1948, The Little Stranger follows central character Dr. Faraday (Domhnall Gleeson) as he experiences strange goings-on after being summoned to Hundreds Hall. Faraday has a not so happy history at the 18th Century-built estate since he more or less grew up there when his mother was a housemaid. Mrs. Angela Ayres (Charlotte Rampling) is ailing, so her daughter, Caroline (Ruth Wilson), asks for Faraday’s help. The two knew each other when they were children.
Complications arise upon Faraday’s arrival, when he crosses paths with Roddy Ayres (Will Poulter), Caroline’s brother. Roddy bears grotesque facial scars inflicted during his military service in WWII. Even more troubling is his inability to deal with PTSD symptoms, resulting in violent mood swings. The Ayres’ small family unit, accentuated by living in a mansion, has one youngish maid, Betty (Liv Hill), whose fortitude is being tested to the limit. Roddy’s outbursts are challenging enough, but she, along with inhabitants and visitors at Hundreds Hall, have begun to experience strange happenings. Something is awry, and a ghost might be the reason.
Faraday decides to take on Mrs. Ayres as his patient, and spends more and more time at the estate. (His office is in a nearby village.) He and Caroline become romantically entangled, which adds a subplot element. But then there is the thing that rings all the inner house phones, the thing that answers each phone with breathing, and the thing that is marking the walls, and soon slicing human skin.
Let me emphasize that the violence is jarring, but not as graphic as most horror movies over the last few decades. That includes a little girl being bitten in the face by a dog. It is only heard off camera, but that suffices. It is in no way as relentlessly terrifying as an Amityville Horror or a Poltergeist. The Little Stranger is more in the league of 1963’s The Haunting. There is suggested horror with bits of slap in your face violence.
The well cast actors do very well, and Abrahmanson’s direction is solid. Nuanced is the apt description here.
The Little Stranger is low on the creepazoid meter, but it tingled a couple of nerves along my spine. Forgiving its rather ambiguous conclusion, the film merits a viewing. ——————————
GRADE on an A-F Scale: B-